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Automic Automation vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Automic Automation
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (3rd)
VMware Aria Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
169
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (1st), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (16th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Automic Automation and VMware Aria Automation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Automic Automation is designed for Workload Automation and holds a mindshare of 6.9%, up 6.1% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 10.8% mindshare, down 12.5% since last year.
Workload Automation
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

AnkitSrivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Good automation, handles complex jobs, and is easy to manage
We do use the solution for business-critical processes. We have a lot of complex jobs. They are using multiple databases to connect to one master. We execute jobs on multiple databases. I'm currently working with Broadcom and have created a few alert mechanisms for bug alerts. When we find bugs and report them, we can get hard fixes applied. The solution's ability to handle large volumes of data is very good. I've been happy with it. We can improve so many things by 20% or more. It's a very costly product, and the client who is paying for it needs to see results, and so far, they are. The GUI interface is very good. It's user-friendly, even for new users. Within a few days, they can learn the solution. It's easy to learn and not overly complex. In one console, we can run multiple executions and manage the load balancer, et cetera. It's very easy now to manage complex workflows using this product. We can maximize agent performance. We can execute a large number of jobs. Compared to other tools, it's much more efficient. The visibility and control is excellent. The predictive modeling provided by AI is very good. We can implement fixes automatically as well. Its predictive modeling has been very critical. Jobs are executing on this and that is very important. Even if the master is down for an hour, the company can lose millions of dollars, so having that predictability is key to managing downtime in advance. We can reduce our job workload failure rates across multiple cloud environments. For example, if we have servers and we are installing agents in the master, we can create agents on multiple servers and we can execute jobs on both agents at one time. That way, if one server goes down, there is no disruption. The jobs will execute on the second agent - and no human interface is required for the task. We've been able to save time. Previously, we were dependent upon so many team members, and it would take one week to create one console or one tool. However, now, within three or four hours, we are creating one master and agents. We save six days. It's comprehensive - but we do have an audit feature. We have a separate audit team and in the tool itself, we have audit automation so we can run audits on a quarterly basis. Sometimes we have big queries and the data is massive and difficult to manage. However, with this product, we can schedule a job and, in three months, we can get a report directly without wasting time. It's safer in terms of audit requirements. With the tool, we've been able to save on operational costs. With other tools, we had difficulty with management, and there were so many dependencies on so many teams. With one console, we can create multiple agents that run on Oracle and have one point of control with multiple features. We can run the solution on both cloud and on-prem environments. We're 90% cloud currently. However, 10% is still left on-prem. Our plan is to move 100% to the cloud.
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good stability, supports a hybrid model and easy to use
There is an area of improvement. For example, you are migrating from a customer's existing data center to a new target data center. To facilitate this transition, you'll initially need to evaluate the customer's aging hardware hosting VMware, which is nearing the end of its operational life. The customer expresses the intention to upgrade to a newer version, necessitating an overhaul of everything in the new data center. As a Systems Integrator (SI), consultant, or architect, your recommendation would be to acquire the latest hardware with a specified configuration and then install VMware on top of it. However, there's a crucial aspect related to the infrastructure requirements for VMware to run seamlessly on that hardware. If there's an opportunity to potentially reduce these infrastructure prerequisites, it would be highly beneficial. This is because a higher number of VMware licenses requires more infrastructure capacity from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) or Colocation partners. Consequently, when discussing the operation of this virtualized environment from VMware over a contractual period of five years, the overall cost to the customer is influenced by the infrastructure requirements. If there's a feasible way to decrease these prerequisites for the infrastructure supporting the virtualization layer, it would be advantageous in terms of cost for the customer. Any customer in today's world exists or wants to exist in a hybrid model, so in future releases, we would like to see this. So, going forward, if this virtualized environment would exist, it has to be a combination of on-premise plus public cloud Azure/AWS. It should be more seamless when your interface or when you are interacting with workloads running on-premise VMware/AWS VMware. So it is only there in some capacity and space, and I'm aware of it. And Azure and VMware already have a tie-up on the same lines, but at the same time, if it is more seamless, if it is more interchangeable, if you could move your workloads, or if you can access your workloads or your virtual machines irrespective of whatever platform it is running, whether it is on-premises, or cloud or public cloud, it'll be a lot more comfortable for a user than the user to consume that infrastructure. Firstly, it needs to have a combination of deployment and be more seamless for the customers. Secondly, more software-defined features, more in terms of managing the infrastructure pool in a software-defined way. Managing the infrastructure pool in a more optimized fashion is going to be the key in the upcoming times. It's not just on-premise, but at the same time, it should also be the public cloud as well. Probably because when I meet my customers, this is one thing that I always tell them. I have seen people moving from on-premise public cloud only to realize at the end of the month that they end up paying a higher bill compared to what they were paying when they were running their business on-premise. The reason is that they do not understand or do not realize the full potential of the public cloud, and the way it should be consumed, the way it should be used, and the way it should be scheduled to ensure that the billing at the end of the month is very optimal. You pay for what exactly you need, not everything that you have from the cloud. That's not a way to use the cloud, whether it is on-premise or from the cloud. For example, an enterprise has over 100 applications. Out of that 100 applications, only 25 applications are running the production instances, and the remaining 75 are running non-production instances. It can be a development environment, a test environment, a sandbox, etc. In this case, you need to run only the 25 applications on the public cloud 24/7. You do not need to run your remaining 75 applications 24/7. Because, eventually, your developers, testers, quality managers, and whoever will use the non-production environment only when they're in the office and working on those applications. Then why do we need to have those applications, which are non-production in nature, lower environments? So we're running on the public cloud all the time because, for a cloud provider, it is a virtual machine; whether you are consuming it for production work or non-production work, it is going to charge you the same bill. And if you are not optimizing, if you're not scheduling workloads, you are actually wasting money. You're wasting your money, and your bills, which you are going to pay with the public cloud provider provided, are going to be bad. It's going to be crazy. And then customers do not know what to do in this situation. And you cannot fight with the public cloud provider because they would say, "I had given you all the possibilities, all the opportunities to learn about it, the way you should be functioning it, the way you should be utilizing it. If you are not using it the way it should be used, That's not my problem."

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"They just talked about adding support for hundreds of thousands of agents, and I know it goes up to about a thousand clients per engine, so you can do a lot with that. It's a very scalable solution."
"It is 100% stable. We have no downtime. We have 24/7 production throughout the year."
"The solution includes many features and is scalable and stable."
"The night processing helps to have data just-in-time for the morning."
"All the components that it can use to design work flow; process automation."
"The very special feature that we use is the connection to ServiceNow."
"We can run the solution on both cloud and on-prem environments."
"I like the script engine of CA, where you can build everything you want."
"The setup was complex in many ways. The first reason is that we have many teams who work on it so it gets complicated gathering all of the people. The second reason is that it can be complicated to install it quickly, within a reasonable amount of time."
"Today, if I want to provision one VM, it takes me five minutes. Earlier, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes to go and choose everything. Now, I can just do one click and it can provision my whole VM. We also integrated with our Alexa, so even through voice functionality, I can create a VM. One of the guys at VMware, along with our partner, deployed that in our environment. If I say, "Hey, Alexa, I need a VM with four gigs of RAM," it will go and start creating it."
"It provides visibility into the VM space."
"Even with the virtualization, it would take us at least three or four days to create a VM. With vRA we have brought that down to seven minutes. The solution has helped increase infrastructure, agility, speed of provisioning, time to market, application agility. Everything got super fast."
"The automation part is valuable, especially where vRA integrates with vRO, because it reduces the amount of effort we have to make."
"compare-to-competition; Citrix was on our short list. But over the last ten years, we have been a big VMware shop. We wanted to continue with VMware because we are confident that VMware can address any kind of problem situation, any challenges. But with Citrix, we didn't find that kind of credibility when we did solution testing, a PoC."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers. Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities."
 

Cons

"Today, we use a rich client for this product. In the future, or for the next release, they will be using a web interface. This web interface is not as scalable as the rich client for us. The web client is not 100 percent programmed as we need it."
"When there's an error or a problem, the automation part of it could be easily programmed to escalate it up to the developers or whoever is going to work on it. We had to home-grow that within the product because third-party products are so expensive."
"The new user interface AWI could improve. It is quite easy to use and work around, but it has lost some of the functionality that we used to have in our Vim client user interface."
"I would also like to see a little bit more connectivity, more, "Play nice with other toys." For instance, we have IServ as our primary tool for our service request tickets. In order for it to play nice with Automic, we had to actually create a file and put it somewhere, where Automic can see it. I would like to see more connectivity with other tools, or more compatibility with other tools."
"The support has declined somewhat over the years due to various takeovers. It's not as personal as it used to be."
"The hotline can take a long time. They will say, "I will take it and give it to the Level 2 support.""
"With every new version, things that would previously work, Automic breaks them. So, we have to report the new bugs. Therefore, every time when we patch the system, there is usually a new bug or a feature that was working, then it stops working."
"The manage file transfer area could be better. The file transfer area needs improvement. Other products like Control-M have some good features in this area."
"The initial setup is complex. There are too many components to integrate, especially when we integrated with different storage types and backup vendors. All the integration made it more complex."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?"
"The stability is 95 percent. There are some situations where it gets a little bit clumsy. When it gets really big, when you're dealing with a very large deployment, it can be a little bit difficult, but it's better than nothing. It does a significant job, given what it's tasked to do."
"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."
"I don't find the solution to be intuitive and user- friendly. The GUI is really complicated. Tracking down logs and errors is very hard. Then, it takes a specialized JavaScript person to build. Also, I'm not sure how the upgrades are going now, but they definitely need to evolve the upgrade process. Finally, the logs are very generalized. Giving more of an indicator of what's actually going wrong, rather than just a generic error code, would help."
"The stability is why I rated it a seven and not higher. There were several cases where we had to restart some services because it wasn't working correctly anymore. People cannot extend their machine or replay their machine. There is no alert to say that there is a problem and that we should stop the service. The monitoring system is not very good."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have increased efficiency with this application."
"I only know that AWA is cheaper than Control-M, but I'm not aware of the numbers."
"Certain licenses can be a bit expensive. The PeopleSoft agents, in particular, are a bit pricey."
"We have received a lot of time and cost efficiencies from using the product."
"The pricing of Automic Automation varies depending on the specific contract terms."
"The cost of the solution depends on the number of systems that are being orchestrated."
"There are different licensing fees for cases where high availability is important."
"The solution seems expensive to me, but it does the job well."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"It is pricey for what you get."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Automic Workload Automation?
It is easy to manage complex workloads and use electronic workflow automation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automic Workload Automation?
They have increased the license price a little bit. It is more than what we expected about two years ago. So, there could be some surprises when it comes to pricing.
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
The visibility and control that Automic Automation provides are good, but it could be improved. In case we run into performance issues, it is sometimes hard to find out what is the real cause for i...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

Automic Dollar Universe
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Redwood Software, Broadcom and others in Workload Automation. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.